1. Charge of pressing on sea and on shore, and in small craft employed for that purpose. 2. Ships lying in harbour for want of men, at a vast charge of pay and victuals for those they had. 3. Keeping the whole navy in constant pay and provisions all the winter, for fear of losing the men against summer, which has now been done several years, besides bounty money and other expenses to court and oblige the seamen. The second of these (viz., the great wages paid by the merchant) has cost trade, since the war, above twenty millions sterling. The coal trade gives a specimen of it, who for the first three years of the war gave £9 a voyage to common seamen, who before sailed for 36s.; which, computing the number of ships and men used in the coal trade, and of voyages made, at eight hands to a vessel, does, modestly accounting, make £89,600 difference in one year in wages to seamen in the coal trade only. For other voyages the difference of sailors’ wages is 50s, per month and 55s. per month to foremast-men, who before went for 26s. per month; besides subjecting the merchant to the insolence of the seamen, who are not now to be pleased with any provisions, will admit no half-pay, and command of the captains even what they please; nay, the king himself can hardly please them. For cure of these inconveniences it is the following project is proposed, with which the seamen can have no reason to be dissatisfied, nor are not at all injured; and yet the damage sustained will be prevented, and an immense sum of money spared, which is now squandered away by the profuseness and luxury of the seamen. For if prodigality weakens the public wealth of the kingdom in general, then are the seamen but ill commonwealths-men, who are not visibly the richer for the prodigious sums of money paid them either by the king or the merchant. The project is this: that by an Act of Parliament an office or court be erected, within the jurisdiction of the Court of Admiralty, and subject to the Lord High Admiral, or otherwise independent, and subject only to a parliamentary authority, as the commission for taking and stating the public accounts. In this court or office, or the several branches of it (which, to that end, shall be subdivided and placed in every sea-port in the kingdom), shall be listed and entered into immediate pay all the seamen in the kingdom, who shall be divided into colleges or chambers of sundry degrees, suitable to their several capacities, with pay in proportion to their qualities; as boys, youths, servants, men able and raw, midshipmen, officers, pilots, old men, and pensioners. The circumstantials of this office: 1. No captain or master of any ship or vessel should dare to hire or carry to sea with him any seamen but such as he shall receive from the office aforesaid.